Aktaion Restaurant — Restaurant in Municipality of Thira

I've visited a few restaurants in Santorini, one that cost so much my jaws dropped. More expensive than Michelin stars restaurants with great reviews but nothing impressed me as much as Aktaion. Hard to make reservation but if you come first thing at open, you may have a slim chance as walk in. The dishes are similar besides the mushroom gyros but they did it very well at least with the top reviews restaurants we tried in Santorini.

Mushroom gyro - This one is must get. It's unique because we haven't seen any of the restaurants we tried in Greece. So well marinated and flavorful, I enjoyed just have the mushroom itself.

Fried calamari - It's fried calamari. Though I do like the batter sticks well on the calamari.

Grilled octopus - The grilled octopus was grilled very well, you can taste the charred grill flavor. But the puree really took the spot light. Nicely flavored. There were some green stuff, like a puree sauce. Whatever it was, it's sweet and little bit of sour. So flavorful.

Grilled pork neck - It was amazing! The grilled flavor and the tenderness of the pork neck was so good. Very impressed.

Mushroom pasta - so Al dente. It's extraordinarily. Love the mushroom and truffle sauce. It's really awesome!

Sea bass - I don't like fish much but my wife said it was good. I tried a bit and it was definitely fresh.

Seafood pasta - If you had pasta in Greece you will noticed they often use tomatoes sauce. This one is also tomato based but I was very impressed with how excellent the flavor is. It's not overwhelmed by the tomato flavor but they used the juice off the prawn to make a tomato cream sauce. It's quite delightful and was the best sauce I've had in...

Popular for a reason. Aktaion is the type of restaurant that harkens back to the philosophy of what it means to be a family dining establishment, which is to say - a meeting place, warm, convivial, where you feel a deep sense of presence from the serving staff and a groundedness to the food, much of which is locally sourced. You leave not just having had a wonderful meal, but also feeling connected to the story of the place in a small way. It is not easy keeping a restaurant open for 100 years, and Aktaion speaks beautifully to that in their heartfelt menu. This is not an opportunistic ‘tourist trap’, this is a place where the family who run it have put blood sweat and tears into serving over several generations.

We were lucky enough to chance upon a vacant table at sunset, and enjoyed the people watching just as much as the changing colours splashed across the sky.

We shared the salad with dried fig and some sort of delicious cheese, the fried calamari, the pie of the day AND the lamb. Everything delicious, left waddling, absolutely stuffed to the gills. Overall one of my favourite dining...

If I could leave zero stars, I would. I had my night ruined. I ordered a lamb that came out smelling like a cinnamon bun, I asked the waiter if the lamb was supposed to have that much cinnamon since it wasn't noted at all in the menu description, so he took my plate away without saying anything and brought me the bill. I asked if I could order anything else, as my partner had just started on his pasta, and they said no and left me to stare while everyone else ate in the next 2 minutes. When we went to pay and told them that what they had done was unprofessional and uncalled for, they rolled their eyes at us and told us they had done nothing wrong, and didn't understand why we were complaining. The 45 minutes we were there, we witnessed how they mistreated every single table inside, from yelling at someone to speak in a lower tone, to another grandpa's who had swapped tables to share information. HORRIBLE PLACE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A GOOD TIME, they should not be working in the service industry, we come from the hospitality background ourselves, and have never met such...